SSN is a digest of the day's soccer/football/futbol articles with a focus on the top European leagues and the United States National Team. Below, you’ll find links to articles and video, as well as additional features and commentary. We locate the top news of the day so you can stay updated with ease.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Another epic episode of El Clásico went down last night and Madrid emerged 1-3 winners in Barcelona. As you might expect, Ronaldo figured prominently with two goals for The Whites. Meanwhile, Messi (as he did in Milan) went missing. Perhaps he had a fever?

Sid Lowe was there (of course he was!) and thinks that Barca may have lost more than the Copa del Rey with this performance. Mainly, identity, supremacy, fitness, and confidence.

The best moment of the match (from a neutral's perspective) came when Di Maria completely destroyed Puyol with a little shimmy and left the Barcelona Hair Farm doing his best Dominique Dawes imitation. Di Maria's shot was saved, but Ronny calmly slotted home the rebound to make it 0-2.

Grant Wahl's been speaking with MLS players. He's been asking them questions. Questions like, "If you were starting a team from scratch and could pick one MLS player to start with, who would it be?" Surprisingly, even though he's retired, Coby Jones got the most votes. Uh. No.

Americans Abroad. Brek Shea made his debut for Stoke City at Fulham on Saturday. It was the early match on ESPN2, and, well, we were up early so watched the whole damn thing. He was decent. Not great, not terrible. He won a penalty that Jonathan Walters (twat) wasted, but that was about it. Here's a look at all the rest of the guys playing in other countries. Looks like things went quite poorly for Maurice Edu over in Turkey.